


If You Tilt Your Head

by Yung_Mofftiss (OnWednesdaysWeStudyinPink)



Series: Death Bingo [3]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-04
Updated: 2009-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnWednesdaysWeStudyinPink/pseuds/Yung_Mofftiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter becomes intrigued by an infection. Prompt: Illness (sepsis)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Tilt Your Head

Peter, who was driving them to work as always, was giving him a funny look. “Walter, have you been wearing your clean clothes?”

Walter, who was making important notes in his notebook as always, turned to look at his son. “Yes, why?”

“Something smells.” Peter looked at him suspiciously. “Are you carrying cheese in your pockets again?”

“No!” Walter cried out, trying to defend himself—he’d stopped that weeks ago!

“You’d better not, it’s disgusting.”

*******

Walter, who was trying to power through the pain—he’d lost his little baggie of painkillers—felt his concentration break momentarily as his son came up behind his shoulder to nag.

“Walter, it still smells. Now, you can give me whatever it is you’re hiding or I can find it.”

“Astroturf doesn’t smell anything,” Walter pointed out, irritated.

His assistant shrugged. “I have a slight cold. Sorry.”

“I want the smell gone by the time we go home,” his son warned before leaving him to go join Agent Dunham in the makeshift office.

“Well, he’s grumpy,” his assistant said cheerfully.

“Indeed.” He wondered if he ought take his temperature and write it down in his notebook. “I’m feeling a little hot. Perhaps I’ve caught your cold.”

*******

It was two days later and Walter had his head leaned against the cool glass of the passenger window. He had a slight fever and he was feeling a bit sluggish.

“Well, it doesn’t smell so much today,” Peter said as they turned towards Harvard.

_That’s because I really scrubbed it out this morning with the free hotel shampoo._

Walter managed a grunt, his hands possessively concentrating on the little notebook in his lap.

His son looked over at him curiously. “You feeling okay?”

“I think I may have caught my assistant’s cold,” he said softly and managed a weak smile for his son.

Peter worried the inside of his cheek, looking concerned. “Well, just take it easy today, okay?”

*******

In the lab, Walter mostly felt like sleeping, which was not as fun as it sounded when one’s assistant had brought in prawns to give LSD to. He was limping slightly, the painkillers not working as well as they should have.

His assistant wrinkled her nose slightly as she pointed down to the bottom of his right leg. “Walter, what’s that on your trousers?”

He looked down and to his horror he saw a wet patch on his pant leg, where the bandage was leaking through again. “Oh, nothing. Please excuse me.”

He stumbled off to the laboratory’s bathroom, where he quickly locked the door behind him. Gingerly rolling up his trouser leg, he could see the olive oil yellow and teastain brown forming an ugly blotch across the white gauze. Cursing quietly, he found the roll of bandage material he had hidden behind the toilet tank. His fingers trembled as he quickly began to unwrap the soiled dressing, having to pause so that he could unbutton the top two buttons of his shirt— _it’s so hot in here_ —and threw the bandages into brown plastic wastebasket under the sink.

The new bandages in place, he pulled his pant leg down and used a wet paper towel to clean up the rivets of sweat on his face. He was breathing hard— _it’s because I don’t want them to know_ —and he wondered if he was imagining the walls closing in on him.

Walter tried to make his way to the door to write down his observations of his blackened flesh, but he felt so weak…his heart was racing… and he had to slump against the wall…

*******

“Walter? Walter? Are you okay? You’ve been in there for an awfully long time!” Astrid pounded on the bathroom door again with her fist and then looked grimly at Peter. “I think you should get the door open.”

Together they began to ram the door with their shoulders, trying break it in—Walter had locked it and this was the only way they were going to get in. Olivia watched with a concerned look, leaning her weight on her cane.

The door finally gave way and Astrid went skittering across the floor, losing her balance as she fell against the sink while Peter stumbled and tripped over the body lying on the tiles, nearly cracking his skull on the toilet bowl.

“WALTER!” Astrid screamed, looking at the scientist spread out across the floor.

“No pulse!” Peter cried out as he slipped his fingers onto Walter’s neck then turned to the horrified blonde standing in the doorway. “Olivia, call 911! Astrid, get the defibrillator and the CPR shield!”

Both women went off as fast as they could to get the help needed. Astrid returned quickly with the emergency first aid and while Olivia called for help, they quickly tore open Walter’s shirt, getting ready to use the defibrillator. That didn’t work though and Peter began CPR.

Astrid tried to keep her calm, but her attention was drawn to a strange crusty patch on Walter’s lower pant leg, over his right calf.

“What the—“ Astrid pulled up his trouser leg to reveal his heavily bandaged calf. Pulling her pocket knife out, she proceeded to cut the white gauze off and revealed something terrifying. “Oh my god!”

Olivia stumbled back. “What’s wrong with his leg?”

“This is what I’ve been smelling,” Peter gagged as a putrid smell filled the small bathroom.

The three couldn’t break their gaze from the black flesh, filled with pus and green ooze.

“I’m going to be sick,” Olivia declared from the doorway.

Astrid covered her mouth and nose with her sweater sleeve. “It’s rotting.”

Olivia began to dry heave.

“Necrosis.” Astrid was unable to look away.

“It’s septic shock—blood poisoning,” Peter realised. “That’s what’s made him sick.”

“The EMTs are here!” Olivia waved her hands wildly while shouting, “Over here!”

*******

It was evening and Astrid, who was cleaning the lab up as she always did, approached Peter, who was standing by the electron microscope, staring at a Petri dish Walter had been cutting up fire ants in.

“Sorry about your dad, Peter,” she said softly, her voice still a little hoarse from crying. She let her fingers touch his briefly before she handed him a small black notebook. “I found this and thought you might want to take a look at it.”

Peter looked at it hesitantly, then back at her before opening it up to look inside it. “He was documenting it?”

Inside the notebook was an ongoing log that Walter had created to keep a record of the wound on his leg, Polaroid pictures included.

“It looks like it.” She leaned over and flipped through a few pages. “It says here that it started off as a small cut from one of the medical carts almost a month ago and he became curious what could grow on his own body, so he let it stay.”

Peter rubbed at the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Damnit, Walter.”

“Day twenty two: My leg looks like the Virgin Mary,” she read aloud and studying the picture that was included. “It kinda does, if you tilt it like this.”

“Gross,” he exclaimed, making a face.

Astrid didn’t miss the misty look in Peter’s eye and put her arm over his back, trying to give him comfort. Peter said nothing, just continued looking at his father’s Virgin Mary.


End file.
